The Drudges' Generation Gap

They are digital gatekeepers, but the father runs an online library and the son is the proprietor of a news whorehouse.

Outing Prince Harry in Afghanistan and showing Barack Obama in Muslim garb are the latest triumphs of "the world's most powerful journalist," as the UK Telegraph now dubs Matt Drudge, stretching the definition of all three words.

In an era when clicks are currency, Robert Drudge's refdesk.com, "Fact Checker for the Internet," is clearly outvalued by his son's millions of links to facts, factoids and junk news from everywhere.

The story is familiar by now--Young Drudge's Dickensian youth of abject intellectual and psychological poverty and his Horatio Alger ascent after a despairing father gave him a cheap computer--the 7-Eleven years, the psychiatric treatment with Jewish Social Services, the climb back to become manager of a CBS gift shop, the rummaging for scoops in the Hollywood City trash cans before cleaners fed them to the shredders...

A 21st century success story best summarized by the Great Summarizer himself: "24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a 12-month year, 10 years a decade, 10 decades a century, and 10 centuries a millennium, as far as a chip can see, wire services from all over the world move raw data ... all over the world!

"I can access, edit, headline and ... link to it all!

"Throw it up on a website and wait for you to come.

"For seven pre-millennial years, I've covered the world from my Hollywood apartment, dressed in my drawers.

"I've reported when, how, and what I've wanted...

"There's been no editor, no lawyer, no judge, no president to tell me I can't...

"Technology has finally caught up with individual liberty."

As Mel Brooks' Max Bialystock would say, "When you've got it, baby, flaunt it!" But Drudge might want to take a look back at his 20th century counterpart, Walter Winchell, who owned the world of gossip with his punchy phrasing and unfettered "reporting" back then.

Another of today's icons, Larry King, who succeeded the gossip master at his newspaper job, recalls: "He was so sad. You know what Winchell was doing at the end? Typing out mimeographed sheets with his column, handing them out on the corner. That's how sad he got. When he died, only one person came to his funeral."

Sic transit... Wait, I have to check the exact quote on Robert Drudge's web site.

Prince Harry's Excellent Adventure

His grandmother sent him there, and the Drudge Report is bringing him back. For ten weeks, the young man who is third in line for the throne has been soldiering in Afghanistan as the British press honored what used to be called a gentlemen's agreement not to tell the world about it.

But the web site that outed Bill Clinton's Monica Lewinsky adventure has done the same for Prince Harry by citing an article in an obscure Australian magazine, “Prince Harry Fights on Front Lines in Afghanistan.”

So much for the Prince's war. The headline in today's Guardian reports: "Army prepares to evacuate Harry after news blackout fails."

Gen. Sir Richard Dannatt, the British chief of staff, said he was “very disappointed” that “foreign Web sites” had posted the story without asking for permission “in stark contrast to the highly responsible attitude that the whole of the U.K. print and broadcast media, along with a small number of overseas, who have entered into an understanding with us over the coverage of Prince Harry on operations.”

In ten weeks of combat duty, the royal lieutenant has apparently been serving as a spotter to direct air strikes against the Taliban and, now that the secrecy lid is off, the excitable British press is picturing him behind machine guns and babbling such news as "The 23-year-old Household Cavalry lieutenant killed up to 30 of the enemy on his frontline tour by directing at least THREE air strikes."

In a pre-departure interview, Prince Harry told the UK Times that the Queen, his grandmother, "told me I’m off to Afghanistan...and she was very pro me going."

Now Drudge is bringing him back.

Redhead Abuse

If ye have tears, prepare to shed them now for Prince Harry of England and Nicole Kidman, victims of prejudice by an unfeeling society against the ginger-haired.

In Britain, ABC reports a rising tide of discrimination with one family driven from its home by anti-redhead grafitti, vandalism and physical assaults and a waitress awarded $35,000 in a suit for “ginger abuse.”

The U.S. has been spared thus far, possibly because only 2 percent of the population is (pace Clairol) naturally red-headed, while in Scotland and Ireland more than one in ten are subject to ginger-phobia, often expressed by rude remarks from strangers in the streets.

The notion that persons of such color are untrustworthy can been traced as far back as the belief that Judas had red hair.

The plight of carrot tops has not yet resulted in organized resistance, but there has been a revival of interest in the Sherlock Holmes story, “The League of Redheaded Men,” which would now, of course, be “Persons.”

Back here, the American response has been typically defiant--T-shirts with a ketchup bottle labeled “Saucy Redhead.”